‘Oh, I’m sure he had cops and guys from the state police on his payroll, but I’ll do you one better. I think Sullivan was an informant for the Feds. Now ask me how I can possibly say that.’
‘How can you possibly say that?’
‘Thank you for asking. See, the Italians in the North End, they went down like flies, one right after another. Sullivan, though, kept running his business – thrived, in fact. Not once was he arrested.’
‘What about Reynolds?’
‘Nope. It was like the two of them were untouchable.’
‘Who set up the sting on Boston Harbor?’
‘That would be the good people at the FBI’s Boston field office. Special Agent Alan was working with one of my informants, the aforementioned safe cracker Billy O’Donnell. Billy got busted and was facing a permanent vacation at one of our fine supermax prisons, so he did some wheeling and dealing with Alan, told him he had some very significant information on Mr Francis Sullivan. Alan agreed to the deal, and Billy told him that Sullivan was bringing in a major score of heroin by boat. Alan told his superiors and set up a sting on Boston Harbor, where the transaction was supposed to take place.
‘One of the undercover guys,’ Jennings said, ‘a Fed named Jack King, was in communication with the command post when Sullivan for some reason stepped aboard and started shooting. King got shot, and by the time the cavalry arrived, both boats were engulfed in flames. No survivors. Sullivan and the two guys from his crew, the undercover Feds on the boat – everyone was burnt to a crisp. Divers came in the next morning to pull out their bodies. No survivors.’
‘Were you there?’
‘Oh, no, this was strictly a Feds-only party. No ATF, no state or local police. Boston Feds had a major hard-on for Sullivan. Once the Italians were out of the way, they came under some serious pressure to deliver Sullivan next. It wouldn’t look good if the Boston cops or staties delivered Sullivan’s head on a silver platter, no, they had to do it, so they locked us out. They threw our informants into WITSEC so we couldn’t get access to them. In other words, we were left in the dark.’
‘Was Reynolds involved?’
‘In the sting? Probably. Sullivan never went anywhere without Reynolds in tow. The Feds tried to prove it – Boston PD tried too, after the fact, but Kevin had a rock-solid alibi. He’s a crafty prick.’
Darby took off a glove and rubbed her sweaty forehead. She couldn’t see how all the pieces fit together: Kendra Sheppard using an alias; the Feds; the bodies buried in the basement of a home owned by the mother of Kevin Reynolds, a former henchman for the now-deceased ringleader of Boston’s Irish mafia. And don’t forget your father. Big Red is somehow involved in all of this – your father and the man who murdered him.
Jennings grinned, kneading the gum between his nicotine-stained front teeth. ‘I haven’t told you the best part.’
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me.’
‘You’re going to love this. I mean, you really are going to love it. Special Agent Alan here?’ Jennings tapped the dead man’s shoe with his. ‘He was one of the undercover agents planted on the boat. He’s supposed to be dead.’
30
‘Forgive me for asking the obvious question,’ Darby said, ‘but you’re positive Special Agent Alan was on the boat?’
‘I am, but you don’t have to take my word for it,’ Jennings said. ‘Read the FBI transcripts. That is, if the FBI will let you. It took me, oh, I don’t know, three months of visiting their office every morning before they finally produced the transcripts of what happened that night.’
‘Did you ask to listen to the audio?’ Darby knew the Feds recorded the communications between the boat and the command post.’
‘As a matter of fact, they did,’ Jennings said. ‘Sadly, they wouldn’t allow me to listen to the tapes, citing that they were part of an ongoing Federal investigation.’
Darby grinned. ‘You don’t trust the Feds?’
Jennings laughed. ‘I know, I know. I should place more faith in our government officials. But I’m a stubborn old man, Miss McCormick. I’ve seen too many things here in Charlestown – things that would make the hair on the back of your pretty neck stand on end. I’ll tell them to you sometime, but right now I want to know how a Federal agent has somehow resurrected himself from the dead only to wind up being shot to death inside Kevin Reynolds’s basement – which is full of human remains, no less. If you have any ideas or theories, I’d love to hear them.’
For the next twenty minutes she led Jennings through her brushes with the unidentified men in the woods, the driver of the brown van and the cameraman with his laser mike.
‘Now that is an interesting development,’ Jennings said after she finished. Then he glanced down at the body. ‘And this man is Peter Alan. I’ll bet my salary for the entire year on it. But don’t take my word for it. His prints will be stored in the database.’
Darby nodded. All federal and state employees – all law enforcement personnel – had their fingerprints stored inside the national fingerprint database, IAFIS. ‘I’ll print him here,’ she said. ‘I’ll call someone from the lab to get the fingerprint card so we can get a head start.’
Footsteps moved to the top of the basement steps.
‘Hey, Stan,’ the patrolman from the kitchen said.
‘Yeah, what’s up?’
‘Is there something wrong with your phone?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Tim’s been trying to call you and said he keeps getting your voicemail. He’s got a lead on Reynolds.’
‘Coop called you earlier but couldn’t get you on the phone,’ Darby said. ‘I tried calling you from the road and kept getting your voicemail.’
Jennings took out his phone and examined it. ‘That’s odd.’
‘What?’ Darby asked.
‘It’s dead. I thought the battery was charged when I left the house. I’ll have to grab a spare.’ He turned to the stairs and shouted, ‘Get Tim on the phone; I’ll be right up.’
Jennings reached into his pocket, came back with a business card and handed it to Darby.
‘These gentlemen you mentioned seeing in Belham today: if you see them again I want to know. I might be able to help you identify them.’
‘How will I get in touch with you?’
‘Talk to Jake – that’s the patrolman upstairs in the kitchen. He’ll be able to track me down.’
‘Before you go, post someone at the front door. If these men I mentioned are lurking around, I don’t want them to gain access to the house. I’d also like to call Detective Pine from Belham and bring him into this, as the two cases are related.’
‘As long as everyone shares, I don’t have a problem.’
‘You won’t have a problem.’
‘Good. Keep me in the loop.’
‘Will do.’
Jennings ran up the basement steps. Darby turned her attention to the cardboard box packed with bones.
Two skulls stained brown from their time buried in the soil. Judging by the smooth cheekbones and shape of the foreheads, both skulls belonged to Caucasian females.
‘Darby.’
She turned to see Coop standing just a few feet away.
‘While you were talking with Jennings, I tried calling the ME’s office,’ he said. ‘I kept getting static.’
She took out her phone. It turned on fine but the screen kept flickering.
‘All of our phones aren’t working?’ Coop said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
She thought back to what she’d seen earlier on the hospital video. The man posing as Special Agent Phillips – Peter Alan, according to Jennings – had brought with him some sort of high-energy radio frequency device that fried the circuitry inside the hospital’s security cameras, computers and phones. Was there some sort of HERF device down here?